If you're a full-time spreadsheet jockey, or just a casual number-cruncher, you've come to know and either love or hate Excel's interface. Well, your world just changed. Throw away almost everything you know about Excel's look and feel. Microsoft Corp. made some very dramatic changes in Excel 2007.
The good news is that you should welcome most of the changes, because they make it easier to get at all of Excel's power. The bad news is that you're going to have to learn how to use the application again.
That's where we come in. We'll give you a guided tour of the new interface, show you what's new and what's the same, and offer tips and tricks for getting the most out of Excel 2007.So come along with us, and you'll find yourself creating charts and crunching numbers in no time at all.
Get the lay of the land
The Excel 2007 interface represents possibly the biggest change Microsoft has made to the look and feel of the program and to how you get at its myriad features. No matter what you do -- from opening files or adding formulas to creating charts or even just using a menu -- you'll find things have changed.
Here's a quick guided tour to the Excel 2007 interface:
The Excel 2007 interface. (Click for larger view.)
1. The Microsoft Office button. The big button on the upper left-hand corner of the screen replaces the old File menu from previous versions of Excel. You'll find familiar features for opening files, saving files, printing files and so on, but there's a lot more here as well, as you'll discover later in this guide.
2. The Quick Access tool bar. Just to the right of the Office button is the Quick Access tool bar, with buttons for using Excel’s most common features, including Save, Undo, Redo, Sort, Print Preview and more, but you can add and remove buttons for any functions you please. More on that later.
3. The Ribbon. Love it or hate it, the Ribbon is the main way you'll work with Excel. Instead of old-style menus, in which menus have submenus, submenus have sub-submenus and so on, the Ribbon groups small icons for common tasks together in tabs on a big, well, ribbon. So, for example, when you click the Insert tab, the Ribbon appears with buttons for items that you can insert into a spreadsheet, such as charts, tables, pivot tables, clip art or a hyperlink.
If you've spent years getting to know Excel's old interface, you'll likely be frustrated at having to learn a whole new interface. But even if you hate the Ribbon initially, it can be your friend; check out the section Learn to love the Ribbon for details.
4. The Scrollbar. This is largely unchanged from previous versions of Excel; use it to scroll up and down. There are a couple of minor changes. At the top, there's a double arrow that when clicked upon, expands the area at the top of the worksheet that displays the contents of the current cell. Just below the double arrow is a tiny button that looks like a minus sign that lets you split your screen in two.
5. The View tool bar. There is now a View tool bar at the bottom right of the screen that lets you choose between Normal, Page Layout and Page Break Preview -- a view that will show you how your spreadsheet will look when it prints. There's also a slider that lets you zoom in or out of your document.
Learn to love the Ribbon
At first, the Ribbon may be off-putting. But the truth is, once you learn to use it, you'll find that it's far easier to use than the old Excel interface. It does take some getting used to, though.
The Ribbon. (Click for larger view.)
The Ribbon, by default, is divided into seven tabs, with an optional eighth one (Developer) that you can display by clicking the Office button and choosing Excel Options > Popular > Show Developer tab in the Ribbon.
Here's a rundown of the tabs and what each one does:
- Home: This contains commonly used Excel features, such as inserting formulas, formatting tables, rows, cells and text, and sorting and filtering.
- Insert: As you might guess, this one handles anything you might want to insert into a document, such as charts, pivot tables, tables, pictures, clip art, text, WordArt ... well, you get the idea.
- Page layout: Here's where you'll change margins, page size and orientation, define your print area, set page breaks, specify which rows and columns will print on each page and so on.
- Formulas: If you're a spreadsheet jockey, you'll be spending a lot of time on this tab. As the name says, it's where you'll go to insert and work with formulas. It organizes all of Excel's formulas into categories, such as Financial, Logical, Math & Trig, and so on, so they're all within easy reach. And it also gives you quick access to useful formula-checking features, such as error-checking and the ability to trace precedents and dependents.
- Data: Whatever you need to do with data, you'll find it here. For example, you can use this tab to import data from a wide variety of sources, including the Web, Access, SQL Server and so on. You'll also be able to filter and sort data, validate your data, group and ungroup data, and perform data analysis, among other features.
- Review: Need to check spelling and grammar, look up a word in a thesaurus, work in markup mode, review other people's markups or compare documents? This is the tab for you. It also lets you protect worksheets and workbooks, and share workbooks.
- View: Here's where to go when you want to change the view in any way, including displaying or turning off gridlines and the formula bar, zooming in and out, splitting and hiding panes, and so on.
- Developer: If you write code or create forms and applications for Excel, this is your tab. It also includes macro handling, so power users might also want to visit here every once in a while.
Each tab along the Ribbon is organized to make it easy to get your work done. As you can see below, each tab is organized into a series of groups that contain related commands for getting something done -- in our example, handling fonts.
Inside each group is a set of what Microsoft calls command buttons, which carry out commands, display menus and so on. In the example, the featured command button changes the font size.
There's also a small diagonal arrow in the bottom right corner of some groups that Microsoft calls a dialog box launcher. Click it to display more options related to the group.
Ribbon organization.
All that seems simple enough ... so it's time to throw a curveball at you. The Ribbon is context-sensitive, changing according to what you're doing. Depending on the task you're engaged in, it sometimes adds more tabs and subtabs.
The Chart Tools -- Design, Layout and Format tabs appear only when you need them. (Click for larger view.)
For example, when you insert and highlight a chart, several entirely new tabs appear: Design, Layout and Format, with a Chart Tools supertitle on top, as you can see in the image to the left.
Other "now you see them, now you don't" tabs include Picture Tools, Table Tools and SmartArt Tools -- all of which appear in response to various actions you take in Excel.
The Office button and Quick Access tool bar: Your new best friends
There are two more new Excel tools that you'll want to get to know -- the Office button and the Quick Access tool bar. Think of the Office button as a greatly expanded File menu from the Excel 2003 days -- the File menu on steroids. As you can see in the figure below, it's where to go for the various Open, Save, New, Print and related options and also includes a list of all your recently opened files.
Clicking the Office button reveals everything the File menu used to, and more. (Click for larger view.)
But there are three particularly noteworthy new features here as well -- Prepare, Publish and Convert. Convert lets you convert documents saved in older formats to the new Microsoft Office Open XML format, which is the new Office standard. For Excel, the extension is .xlsx. Publish does exactly what it says; it gives options for publishing a document. If your company uses a document management server or SharePoint, you can publish it there.
Use Prepare when you've finished your worksheet and are ready to share it with others. There are plenty of great options here, such as marking a document as final; encrypting the document; inspecting it for hidden metadata and information you'd prefer remain private; and adding a digital signature. Because Excel 2007 isn't yet widely deployed, a particularly useful feature here is running the Compatibility Checker, which will let you know whether the worksheet contains features not supported by earlier Excel versions.
For those who like to fiddle with the Excel interface and how it works, the Excel Options button, located at the bottom of the Office button's box, lets you customize Excel in many ways, including how you work with formulas, and rules for error-checking worksheets. It has many of the features that you accessed via Tools > Options in previous versions of Excel, plus more. It's far better organized and easier to use than Tools > Options was.
Even those who can't stand the Excel makeover and the Ribbon will find at least one thing to cheer about -- the Quick Access tool bar. This nifty little tool seems innocuous enough, but spend some time with it and you'll see it's one of the best additions to the new interface.
The three buttons on the left -- Save, Undo and Redo -- aren't particularly noteworthy, but the small icon to the right that looks like a small chart -- the Quick Layout button -- is exceedingly useful. Highlight a chart, click the button and a selection of premade chart layouts appear. Click the one you want, and it will immediately be applied to the chart.
Probably the most helpful customization for Excel 2007 is to add buttons the Quick Access tool bar, and there are several ways to do so. Directly to the right of the Quick Layout button, the nearly invisible Down arrow is the key to the Quick Access tool bar. Click it and you'll be able to add and remove tool bar buttons for a preset list of about 10 commands.
To add buttons for additional commands, select More Commands from this list. The screen below appears. (You can also get to this screen by clicking the Office button and choosing Excel Options and then Customize.)
Adding buttons to the Quick Access tool bar. (Click for larger view.)
Choose a command from the left-hand side of the screen that you want to add to the Quick Access tool bar and click Add. You can change the order of the buttons by highlighting a button on the right side of the screen and using the Up and Down arrows to move it.
The list of commands you see on the left may seem somewhat limited at first. That's because Excel is showing you only the most popular commands. There are plenty of others you can add. Click the drop-down menu under "Choose commands from" at the top of the screen, and you'll see other lists of commands -- All Commands, Home Tab and so on. Select any option, and there will be plenty of commands you can add.
Finally, there's an even easier way to add a command. Right-click any object on the Ribbon and choose "Add to Quick Access tool bar." You can add not only individual commands in this way, but also entire groups -- for example, the Cell Styles group.
Once you've got the Quick Access tool bar customized to your liking, you will hardly ever have to use the Ribbon.
Six tips for working with Excel 2007
If you're a longtime Excel user, you no doubt have accumulated a set of shortcuts and customizations. Many of those have gone away under Excel 2007. But fear not, because there are plenty of ways for you to bend Excel 2007 to your will. Here are some tips to get you started.
1. Turn off the Ribbon.
Here's what may be the best tip you'll ever come across for Excel 2007 -- how to turn off the Ribbon. Doing this will get you back plenty of screen real estate, as you can see in the screenshot below.
It's easy to make the Ribbon disappear and reappear. (Click for larger view.)
The Ribbon will still be available when you want it -- all you need to do is click on the appropriate menu (Home, Insert, Page Layout and so on) and it appears. It then discreetly goes away when you are no longer using it.
There are several ways to turn off the Ribbon:
- Click the Down arrow to the right of the Quick Access tool bar button and select Minimize the Ribbon.
- Press Ctrl-F1. (Press Ctrl-F1 to make it appear again.)
- Double-click the current tab above the Ribbon.
2. Get your old Excel 2003 tool bars back.
Say you've given the Ribbon a fair shake and you just can't stand it. Although Microsoft doesn't provide a way to get the old Excel 2003 interface back, a couple of third-party tools, Classic Menu and ToolbarToggle, do. See Hands on: Show Office 2007 who's the boss for details.
3. Customize the Ribbon.
Maybe you mostly like the Ribbon, but some of the commands aren't located where you'd like them to be. Another third-party program called RibbonCustomizer Pro lets you create new Ribbon tabs or customize existing ones the way you like them.
It's a powerful way to take advantage of the Ribbon's interface while asserting control over what commands appear where. Again, see Hands on: Show Office 2007 who's the boss for more information.
4. Use keyboard shortcuts.
If you're a fan of Excel 2003's keyboard shortcuts, take heart -- most of them still work in 2007. So keep using them.
You can also use a clever set of keyboard shortcuts for working with the Ribbon. Press the Alt key and a tiny letter or number icon appears on the menu for each tab -- for example, the letter H for the Home tab. (See the image below.) Now press that letter on your keyboard, and you'll display that tab or menu item. When the tab appears, there will be letters and numbers for most options on the tab as well.
Using the Alt key helps you master the Ribbon.
Once you've started to learn these shortcuts, you'll naturally begin using key combinations. So instead of pressing Alt then H to display the home tab, you can press Alt-H together. The following table shows the most useful Alt key combinations in Excel 2007.
Excel 2007 Alt key combinationsKey combination / Function
Alt-F / Office button
Alt-H / Home tab
Alt-N / Insert tab
Alt-P / Page Layout tab
Alt-M / Formulas tab
Alt-A / Data tab
Alt-R / Review tab
Alt-W / View tab
Alt-L / Developer tab
5. Use macros.
At first glance, macros -- ingenious shortcuts you can create for performing repetitive tasks -- seem to have been banished from Excel 2007. But they're still there; display the Developer tab, and you'll find them in all their glory. In fact, the Developer tool bar puts the macro tools at easier reach than they were in previous versions of Excel.
You'll find everything you want in the Code group on the Developer tab. Record a macro by clicking the Record Macro button, manage your macros by clicking the Macros button and configure security for macros by clicking the Macro Security button.
All your macro controls are in the Code group on the Developer tab.
Any macros you created in previous versions of Excel should work fine in Excel 2007. See Microsoft's Office Online site for more information about working with macros in Excel 2007.